The communications world is becoming more and more technologically advanced each year. The era of each person having only one single telephone number is essentially a thing of the past. With the advent of computer technology, including wireless communications such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA's), laptop or notebook computers, personal computers (PC's) and other electronic devices, keeping track of family, friends, business associates and colleagues, and other acquaintances has become increasingly difficult. Not only does each person typically maintain several different phone numbers, electronic mail addresses, home and business addresses and other types of important information, but such information changes with a greater frequency than only a decade previously.
Historically, one staple of the common household or office has been a manually maintained address book or Rolodex organizer. However, with today's growing and ever-changing contact information, one can spend a substantial amount of time writing, erasing and further updating this important data. Even those that have become accustomed to maintaining a computerized address book are still routinely required to update and/or confirm the contact information of everyone in their address book in an attempt to keep somewhat current. Also, because it has become a daunting task to keep track of each contact's basic contact information, efficiently keeping dozens, hundreds or even thousands of these contacts apprised of one's own recently-changed contact information has become even more complicated. In other words, these types of manually compiled and maintained computer address books have numerous logistical drawbacks and ultimately do not ensure that the information in them is up-to-date and accurate.
In addition, because there are so many modes (i.e. mobile phone, work phone, home phone, e-mail, text message, etc.) of contacting or accessing even one person, it is nearly impossible to know the specific mode which will yield the highest success rate at a particular time on any given day. Oftentimes, substantial guesswork is required by trying two, three, four or more different such modes before reaching a desired contact. In some cases, none of the modes of access may be successful, such as when the desired contact is staying at the residence of a friend or relative.
Moreover, because of the growing number of different modes of access, a greater likelihood of potentially being contacted by undesirable persons or entities (also commonly known as “spam”) exists. Regrettably, current efforts of safeguarding against or blocking spammers have enjoyed just limited success with within certain modes of access. Spamming still runs rampant within other modes of access.
Unfortunately, attempts at creating a computerized address book have not been entirely satisfactory. Such address books typically require manual updating, which can be very time-consuming. Further, these address books often require synchronization between a PC, a PDA, a mobile phone and/or other electronic devices to increase the likelihood that consistent information is maintained. In addition, some electronic address books require the user to download software onto their computer system in order to run the programs. With these types of systems, one must typically be on his or her own device to access such information or other data. Moreover, if the electronic device is ever lost, stolen, broken or destroyed, or if the data on the device becomes lost or unusable e.g. in the case of a hard drive crash, the user may need to completely reprogram the device and re-enter all of the data onto the device, or obtain the data from a backup system, which may also be not entirely up-to-date. Such an unpleasant experience can be extremely frustrating and can require a significant amount of time which most people cannot afford to spend.
In light of the above, a need exists for a manner of keeping track of one's contacts which requires less maintenance by the user. A further need exists for a way to keep business and/or personal contact information up-to-the-minute accurate with a substantially reduced level of time and effort. Still another need exists to provide a system and method that increases the likelihood of successfully accessing another person by the mode desired by that person. Yet another need exists to provide a method of ubiquitously accessing and/or maintaining important data from a greater number of computerized devices.